WARMED TO HIS WORK.

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 139, 16 June 1927, Page 14

WARMED TO HIS WORK.

"It is the intimate nature of these letters," Mr. Damrosch says, "as well as their number and the wide territory 'from which they come that impresses and warms me to my work. These people who listen in are not formally assembled in auditoriums. They are seated around their own home fires, two and three and four together, in the easy chairs '■'.of their living rooms, listening to music I that comes to them as a part of their I domestic life.

"Naturally, therefore, they respond much more personally and humanly than would any one in an audience assembled in a hall. They write me of their family affairs, of their joys and troubles and hopes, of the mortgage on the farm, the health' of the youngest child, the marriage of the oldest daughter, the anxiety about the son in New York. I have never felt so close to. so many thousands of human beings in my life. Ido not consider that I: am playing to a distant audience ; of 4,000,000 individuals but personally in hundreds of thousands of homes. ,''And sometimes it is even possible to bring families together, in thought and common happiness, at least. For instance, one letter came from a widow in i Detroit. She lives alone, with a family of four married sons and daughters living separately in Chicago, Mineapolis, Buffalo and St. Louis She wrote me that they all listened in, and it made her happy, she said, to know that, as she heard our music, her four children were hearing it too. She felt closer to them and they to her, their thoughts being broadcast^ from each to the others as the music was received by them all. HEAED IN SOUTH AFRICA. "Another letter came from a man in South Africa, who wrote that, although he was 8,000 miles away, he could hear my voice distinctly and the music with its quality unimpaired. And in this connection it is interesting to note how the radio modes at time, for this man said he heard the concerts every Friday night while in fact they took place here on I Saturday evenings, the difference of twen-ty-four hours in time accounting for the difference in days." Mr. Damrosch is naturally interested in all radio improvements. He expects government control to result in cleaning the aii- for better broadcasting, and he is especially concerned about the perfection of receiving sets. He hopes that the tendency will be toward such standardisation that any one anywhere will be able to buy the best in sets and know that he is getting it, for, he. says, much of the effort to broadcast the finest things in music is impared by imperfect receiving sets that mar, and muddle the pure tones of great compositions. . ]

"Bad receiving pets make vulgar the best niusic," he said, "and people howa-

days often buy inferior sets without knowing it. There hasn't been enough standardisation with resultant establishment of the quality of good seta as opposed to those which fail to do their work well. An adequate receiving set is essential to the reception of good mußic." It is evident that Mr Damrosch does not agree with Paderewski, who was quoted recently in Australia as saying tliat he had broadcast once and would never do so again because the radio "demoralised artists." Mr. Damrosch admitted that the piano was leas suited to broadcasting than other . instruments, and explained Paderewski's attitude by this fact.

Mr. Damrosch will remain a guest conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, but he has retired as conduc-tor-in-chief to devote himself enthusiastically to radio.